Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1887-04-14
Industrial Training For Girls.


If | were able, I would change the
public sentiment SO radically that no
girl should be considered well educated,
no matter what her accomplishments,
until she had learned trade, business,
or a profession. There would be fewer
fathers and brothers toiling like galley
slaves to support healthy and vigorous
human beings in stagnating 1dleness-
idle for no earthly reason save that
God has made them women.
Lack of technical and industrial
training not only makes them depen-
dent and inefficient women of our
daughters, it puts them in fearful peril
morally. Incidence is always democrat
izing. Itruins health, destroyes beauty,
fallen women in the city of New York,
1880 had been brought up to do nothing;
525 pleaded restitution as the cause of
their sad life" In view of these facts,
which might be multiplied indefinitely,
ought we not to rid ourselves of the in
herited social idea that it is a shameful
thing for young women to be taught to
support themselves by honorable in
dustry?
In an early stage of the late war, be-
fore the Government had organized its
various departments, [ saw a body of
soldiers march from st. Louis camp of
rendezvous, and embark on boats to 90
down the Mississippi. Among them
were companies without uniforms and
without equipments. The men wore
the citizens dress in which they enlist
ed. 1T was explained that they had
been ordered to the front Immediately
after enlistment, in advance of the ar
rival Of their uniforms and guns, to
maintain the morale Of the army, which
was unfavOrably affected by the mus
terIng out of large numbers who had
enlisted on short terms of service.
Uniforms, guns, and the all-impOrtant
drill would be given these raw recruits,
we were told, when they reached their
destination.
Two or three weeks later, met some
OF these very unequiped men, still with
out uniforms, on board a hospital
boat, steaming slowly up the
river en- route for the
superb general hospitals of st. Louis.
Some OF the poor fellows were so rent
With shot and shell that their own
mothers would not have recognized
them. heard their pitiful story from
many lips, but it was always the same
story; Hardly had these green boys in
the clothes of civilians reached their
regiments, when they were surprised
by the enemy; and without guns or an
hours drill, they were plunged into a
sharp, and disastrous engagement.
6hot at, ShOt down, they could make no
defense; for they had not been supplied
with the munitions of war, nor taught
how to use them.
1t IS as wasteful, as unWise, as in
human, to send our delicately-nutured
and tenderly reared young daughters
out from the home to fight the battle of
life without preparation for it, with
out an equipment in the form of an in
dustrIal and business education, as it
was to send those hapless young fellows
to fight the enemy without drill and
without guns. The results are more
disastrous, and reach farther. Our
daughters are not shot down, like the
unframed military recruit; they live,
but with no individual grasp on life.
They become anxious concerning the
future, with no power to provide for it.
AT the mercy of circumstances which
they know not how to control; victims of
petty beliefs, old abuses, and respect
able tyrannies, they drop into mental
!ll-health, and bodily disease come with
it.
Or they marry land make faithful, low
ing, lovely wives to admiring husbands.
But the husband dies. He was living
on salary, which ceases with his life.
His young widow has one or more
children. What is she to do? Or the
husband may drop into permanent in
yalidism, or into bankruptcy, or into
dissolute habits, If the young wife has
not been in part prepared for such
emergencies by previous training, her
lot is hard indeed.
ooh you can't prepare girls to meet
such emergencies! said an eminent
clergyman, in whose parlors this topic
was being discussed. You must pre-
pare them to be good wives and mothers
and risk the rest. There you will have
to leave them and trust in God.
Our trust must be in God, to be sure.
No one disputes that. And yet | have
the deepest respect for the advice that
Oliver Cromwell gave his soldiers,
Trust in God and keep your powder
dry!
MARY A LIvER01ORE.